Dust in the Mass Effect
by Digital Sage
Summary: There's a very good reason that 'eaten by a video game' doesn't appear on those 'Where do you see yourself...' questionnaires they give you in school. To heck with reason, though. I'm on Omega, and I have two options: Deal with it, or die. (SI, pre-ME1, no pairings yet)
1. Chapter 1

"**Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."**

**- Lemony Snicket**

* * *

_CRITICAL MISSION FAILURE_

"Fuck!"

By some act of higher power, my Playstation 3 controller didn't break as I hurled it into the wall. Still, it crashed into the white drywall with a banging sound so loud that I thought it an accurate representation of the frustration I was feeling at the moment. The black Dualshock 3 bounced onto the equally black plastic top of the console, causing the sliding disk drive lid to open. Unfortunately for it, I was about four killscreens past caring. I just stood up, ripped my headphones off, and stormed out of my room. My thought process?

_I need a fucking drink._

I stomped through the house, making as much noise as I could even though I was the only one home. It didn't take longer than five seconds before I was in the garage. I mashed the door opener, snagged a Mike's Hard Lemonade out of the fridge, and let the afternoon rise to meet me. Slowly, the garage's musty smell and gloomy atmosphere were replaced by fresh air and sunlight. Sure, it was accompanied by the absolutely obnoxious clanking of the garage door taking forever to open, but that was only temporary. Once it had opened enough, I ducked under, popped the cap off my drink, and took a deeper swing than was normal for me.

When the door finally stopped opening, the process of healing truly began.

"Fuck Mass Effect."

* * *

_**Dust in the Mass Effect**_

**Chapter One**

"**Rage Quit"**

* * *

I sat quietly in my lawn chair, sucking at my alcoholic lemonade. It was a mid-April's Monday, the morning of which had been rainy. The humidity was out in force, making me feel damp and dirty in the lazy breeze that was blowing through my valley, but that was the way I liked it. It was nice to cool off after an arduous session of gaming. Playing Mass Effect on Insanity difficulty got me heated like few other things.

The thought of this made me intensely question the logic behind my pursuit of completing it. I wanted that trophy, dammit!

But that is neither here nor there. I was done with that game for the day, I figured. I'd been stuck on the last firefight on Ilos for over three hours by that point. Trophy or not, I had other shit to do. Other shit, that is, like sitting outside with a cold drink and enjoying the post-rain sun.

The birds were at it. Finches, robins, bluejays, the whole rogues' gallery. Across the street was our cleave of the lake, its waters disturbed as three different boats trolled about in search of whatever fish hadn't been caught during the tournament last weekend. A few cars slipped by, a few bikers revved towards the bar up the road, and one beer truck blazed away in hopes of meeting some deadline or another. It was just your typical Tuesday. Nothing impressive. Nothing to get worked up about.

So I sat and drank my alcoholic lemonade. I thought about going in and getting my guitar out and giving the yard a little music, but that would have required getting up. It would have required seeing that killscreen again. It would have ruined the moment. I wanted Mass Effect to be the furthest thing from my mind.

Smiling, I reclined and let the afternoon have me.

It ultimately took a vibration in my pocket to draw me out of the moment. I pulled it up. I had a text message from my dad.

"_Going to bubba ritos. Meet me there_" it said.

Bubba Ritos. The thought of snagging a ten inch quesadilla filled to the brim with steak, beans, and rice was practically irresistible to me. I sprung up, finished off my drink, and cruised back inside to prepare for an outing. I trashed the bottle, threw on some shoes, and grabbed my keys. Before I could turn and head out, however, I caught a glimpse of my TV. It was just the way I'd left it. Giant red letters, options waiting to be chosen, and darkness having eaten the scene of Shepard's death. I sneered in disgust.

"Fuck you, game," I reiterated my statement from earlier as I leaned in to turn the thing off.

Apparently, it took offence.

I felt the power button on my PS3 click, and that was it. The room around me vanished, replaced by darkness. This wasn't just your 'oh, the lights went out' darkness. It was pitch fucking black. To make things even worse, the PS3 had disappeared out from under my finger. The sudden lack of sensation caused me to reel back, at which I realized that my feet were no longer touching to the floor.

I expected to totter over and knock over the several expensive electronics I'd just been standing by. Instead, for better or worse, I found myself free-floating. It wasn't like I was falling or swimming. It was more like gravity had simply ceased working on me. I tumbled through space, unable to speak, breathe, or even think. The only thing I could fully process was how my stomach was churning and how, if this crazy ride were to ever end, that Mike's was going to complete a U-turn straight out of me.

As if cued by this thought, gravity retook its hold over my orientation. I flopped straight backwards, landing with a dull thud onto something cold and metallic. Reacting to the painful stimulus, my eyes rushed open, and my body shot upright. It was such a surge of motion and pain that I yelled out in confusion. Unable to orientate myself, I let my diaphragm give weigh and collapsed onto my side.

Whatever I had landed on, my face was now hanging off its side. I didn't need any more prompting. My mouth opened, sending white liquid spilling onto whatever was below. It didn't complain, so I let everything out there and then. Want to purge? Try vertigo. Thankfully, my lunch had been leftover pasta and water. Smelly, but easy on its way.

Once my esophagus stopped rebelling against me, I returned to lying on my back. My heart was racing, my breaths ragged, and I could feel sweat starting to compile in my nooks and crannies. To say I was a mess would've been an understatement. I felt like I'd just gotten metaphysically stretched like a piece of taffy, except maybe the stretcher was broken and one side couldn't move all the way back to the middle. Part of me was still strung out. Kind of like when you inhale some paint or marker fumes. You're not sure if you're on a high or just feeling overly existential.

I coughed, displacing a blob of spit from my throat. The blob flew upward, coursing upward across a bright light that was emanating from above me. As it broke the light's path, my eyes finally found focus. The blob flew off to God knows where, allowing me to see the light properly. It was strong, definitely stronger than the one I had in my bedroom. It was more like a gymnasium light. Heavy-duty LED. The lamp there was probably taller than I was. Looking on, you could see that there were several of these installed, though they were so spaced out that the entire place seemed rather eerie.

I stared at the light until my eyes were seeing spots, at which I promptly rolled over and looked off into the distance. It was something the likes of which I'd never seen before. Piles of trash stretching on and on, with the majority of it all being large chunks of metal. A junkyard, I figured silently.

_What in the Nine Hells am I doing here?_

I gazed out into the shadowy expanse, that question and a dozen more wracking my mind. Had I fallen asleep? Was this all just some alcohol-induced stupor? No way. Sure, I didn't drink a lot, but there's no way that one Mike's could give me hallucinations. What was the explanation, then? Did I eat some peyote without knowing? The paranoid part of me might have actually believed that. But no. I was too sensible to believe that my morning bowl of cereal or that leftover pasta had psychoactive cactus in it.

"Well… Shit," I mumbled as I proceeded to sit myself up. There was nothing left for me to honestly think, aside from the unhelpful notion that this must have been how Michael felt after he drank that PCP soda in GTA V. At least I still had my clothes on. Silver linings, y'know?

Sitting up didn't do much for me. It did allow me to look at myself, though. As it turned out, the clothes I was happy to still have weren't actually _my_ clothes. My comfy slouch shirt, blue jeans, and flip flops had been replaced by some thin coveralls and a shabby pair of boots. It was all black, lightweight, and easy to move around in, but it still wasn't anything I'd ever worn before. Having the outfit on without knowing where I'd gotten it made my skin crawl. Unfortunately, I didn't appear to have any other options. Junkyards weren't exactly known for their immense hospitality, I derided.

I sat there for an unquantifiable amount of time, just looking around. I was gripped with confusion, but also wonder. I had never in my life seen a place like this. It was huge! The trash was packed so high that you could barely tell where they bottom was, and the walls were nowhere to be seen. What _was_ visible were a couple of gigantic rigs that were suspended off in the distance. I figured they were used to pick out stuff for recycling, or maybe they just added to the mess. Probably both.

As I sat there, thumb up my ass and foot in my mouth, one of the rigs proceeded to switch on. Gleaming red caution lights began to flash, and the sounds of a distant-yet-obnoxious klaxon filled the air. The noise kept on for several seconds, only switching off as the thing began to move. Sure enough, it was headed my way.

"Time to go," I grunted to myself, scowling. I still didn't know what was going on, or even how it had happened, but I was certain of one thing.

_This is going to suck._

* * *

**I don't own Mass Effect. Surprising, isn't it?**

**Also, the first chapter is short because it's a first chapter. Don't worry, I'll post chapter two in a few days.**

**Anyway, I guess this is official proof that I have actual mental sickness or something. Writing self-indulgent fanfiction? My psychiatrist is going to throw me out the window when they find out about this.**

**Also, allow me to give a rousing thank you to my good friend Warhammer 2-4 and his skills as a beta tester. This story wouldn't have been possible without him.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Big thanks to all followers, favoriters, and reviewers! Your support is appreciated!**

* * *

_**Dust in the Mass Effect**_

**Chapter 2**

"**Continue?"**

* * *

The first thing I noticed as I stood up was that leaving the area wasn't going to be a walk in the park.

I, as I'd somehow failed to notice up until that point, was standing on top of one of the scrap piles. Looking down at my feet, I realized that the thing I'd landed on was some oddly shaped slab of metal that just happened to be perched at the pile's peak. This was a fact that, while allowing me to see great distances, gave few options in getting down. It really wasn't worth it, I thought. Seeing really far doesn't do you much good in a place where everything looks the bloody same and you can't see the walls.

Still, as I remembered a proverb saying, 'the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'. So, not wanting to stay up where that rig – which was still moving at me, only being painfully slow about it – could get me, I decided to take a step forward in my journey to get the hell down. The slab I was on was long and thick, and it seemed to be more stable than the random shards of junk around it. My logical side figured would be best to walk the length of it, if only because I wasn't quite steady on my feet yet.

And so I took that single step – a step that caused the slab to lose balance and tilt precariously forward.

The sound of grating and crashing metal made me jolt in terror. Within an instant, I found myself face-to-face with a jagged slope of potential injury. A scream escaped me as my body pitched forward, slamming my knees painfully into the slab. With that, we began to slide.

"Oh- Nonononono!" I whimpered inaudibly as we undertook a descent that was equal parts petrifying and jarringly loud. The noise kicked up by the whole event was even louder than the rig, but that was the least of my worries now. I was sliding down a pile of junk, and my slab didn't exactly have handles or brakes.

You can probably imagine how I handled the situation.

"FUUUUUU- AGH!" I howled as the slab shuttered violently on its path.

I found my hands pressing into the metal, attempting to grasp in on surface area and friction alone. My boots were doing something similar, allowing me to feel every harsh bump and grind as we tore our way down the stack. It was like white water rafting, except there was no water. It was just rocks, the raft was made out of metal, and I lacked even the most basic of safety equipment. Not that a personal flotation device would have helped me in this situation, but it would have made me feel a little better.

The entire ride felt like it took about a minute. In reality, it took about fifteen seconds. When we reached the bottom, a point marked by the fact that there was an actual cleared walkway between the piles of junk, the entire slab stopped moving downward. Thanks to conservation of momentum, I was thrown like a ragdoll off the thing, slamming my face into the floor and turning something of a flip. Somehow, this did _not_ break my spine. Didn't even break my nose, in fact, having landed more on the side of my face than the middle. Whatever deity was conducting my fate at this point must have been very pleased with themselves.

As I came back to my senses, I found myself propped up in a peculiar fashion. My upper back, head, and arms were laid out on the cold, dusty floor in various states of painful disarray. My legs and ass, on the other hand, had gone over my head and landed on the adjacent pile. What was even more disturbing, however, was the fact that there was a sizable stake of metal stuck about two inches up from my manly parts. I let out a grieved whimper, realizing that what was supposed to be a productive trip down the junk pile had nearly resulted in a free castration.

_I was right. That did suck._

I looked around. I'd moved a good thirty meters away from the lights, so it was considerably darker. I could see the slab, though, which had slid all the way across the path and planted its front end into the same pile my legs were on. I was lucky, to be honest. I'd been flung off of it at an angle. If I'd gone straight, it'd have crushed me.

"Ugh… God dammit," I grunted as I rolled off of the pile and struggled back to my feet.

I seemed to be in working order for the most part. The adrenaline rush of the slide had rejuvenated the steadiness in my legs, even if they now had countless bruises on the knees and calves. My back was a little sore, probably from the flip. The real hurt, though, was my face. I'd taken pretty much a straight shot to my cheek and brow on the left side. Seeing where I'd hit, however, I saw that it could have been a lot worse. The floor here was caked in layers of dust and grime thick enough for my mug to leave a nice imprint. If I had slammed the hard metal underneath, I probably would have cracked my skull open. In retrospect, I really wasn't going all that fast down the slope, and the angle wasn't really right for spinal cracking. Still hurt like a fucking bitch, though.

Lacking any reflective surface, I had to resort to checking the extent of my facial injuries the hard way. I reached up and brushed my hands across the afflicted area. Between a line of pain yelps and expletives, I gathered that my brow was bleeding and there was a piece of something stuck firmly into my cheek.

"GYAAAaaaah!"

For some reason, I instinctively pulled the piece of something out. It was glass, naturally. I hope someone was watching me on a security camera or something at this point. The burst of adrenaline combined with the sudden onset of severe stinging pain had me jumping nearly three feet into the air. By the end of it, I was out of breath and covered in shit I'd kicked up off the floor.

I contemplated sitting back down, but the poor look of things made me just stand there. I was in a state of total defeat at this point. I had no bearings, no certainty, and I felt like I'd just been hit by a car. Hope wasn't exactly high on my spectrum of thought at the moment.

Instead of doing something productive, I just stood there and watched the rig move. I could see it better now. It was yellow and black at various parts, and it was large enough to cover an entire pile. It hung from the ceiling, probably running on a grid of tracks. As it stopped at a pile just beyond the one I'd been on, I noticed that it had several claw attachments, one of which was so absurdly large that it could probably pick up a 737 without too much trouble. The cables alone on that thing were probably bigger around than me. It made me wonder exactly what kind of junkyard this was. 'Indoors', 'massive', and 'dark' weren't exactly the adjectives I normally placed with junkyards. Also, remembering the slab I'd ridden down on, what exactly was the crap they were throwing in here?

I turned to where the chunk of metal had fallen. It was at least twenty feet long, probably longer, and it had grooves on it that suggested that more pieces had once been attached to it. I'd never seen anything like it. This thought took me to looking at the piles around me. It was scrap metal, most of which was covered in the same dust that was staining my clothes and hands. It was probably staining my face too, but, again, I didn't have a mirror to check.

Before I could come to any conclusions, something else got my attention. With the rig stopped, the yard had fallen mostly silent. This allowed me to hear some yelling from not too far away. My first thought was that there was someone here, and that maybe they could help me. But then I heard a few full sentences – or, at least, I think they were sentences. If that was English they were speaking, then my understanding of the language had changed considerably in the last few minutes. Not only that, but some of the voices sounded simply inhuman. Whatever was going on over there, I didn't want any part of it.

As my brain worked to make sense of what was happening, things kicked off in a major way.

Gunfire. It was unmistakable. Not only could I hear the loud pops exploding through the pathway, I could see bright streaks tearing across the way in the direction where the yelling had come from. Thankfully, I wasn't stunned to the point of inaction. I knew what to do when guns started blazing, and that was to turn tail and run gut-first into the slab of metal I'd been examining.

…

I'm not making this up.

Now discombobulated and spouting more expletives than a preteen playing Call of Duty, I scrambled over the slab and started running as fast as I could. It was here that I finally realized something I should have grasped while I was still on top of that pile. My situation – _everything _that was happening to me – was all completely ridiculous. Why was I running for my life in a giant indoor scrapyard? That question, combined with the fact that my stomach was still burning from its sudden introduction to a large immovable object moments before, caused me to stumble.

"Agh! Fuck fuck _fuck FUCK!_" I raged as I scraped myself up and kept running. The gunfire was still going off behind me, and it didn't seem to be getting any further away. As the thought that they might be coming after me crossed my mind, a corner on the path emerged from the gloom. I rounded it without hesitation. Maybe they wouldn't make it this far, or maybe they'd turn the other way. The path appeared to run the same grid system as the rig. My corner was just one way on a four-way intersection. Pretty well laid for a scrapyard, I thought.

Whatever pleasant thoughts turning that supposedly safe corner provided were gone as bullets began to blast by the intersection. They were coming my way again!

"Aw, come on!" I was starting to become genuinely angry. You would too if you'd randomly woken up in a creepy place, had the most terrifying excuse for a ride of your life, and then been unwittingly chased by people with guns.

I ran all the way to the next turn. This time, sadly, it wasn't an intersection. Looking back, I could see silhouettes making the turn at the intersection. The bullets behind them told me that I needed to keep going. I refused to get randomly shot in some random firefight. That, I thought as I started to lose pace, was what NPCs were for.

Unfortunately, I wasn't made for outrunning gunmen.

A damned groan escaped me as I stumbled again, this time out of raw exhaustion more than anything else. My hands and knees caught me, grinding through the muck before dragging me to a full stop. My chest was burning, my heart was racing, and my head was pounding. I couldn't keep this up. Desperate, I looked around for anything that might help me. Sure enough, I managed to get lucky.

It was a long, hollowed out cylinder. It could have been anything, honestly, from a construction conduit to a cannon barrel. I didn't care. It was big enough for me to fit inside, so inside I went.

Only a choice few seconds later, as I was crouched with a hand clutching my chest, the bullets began to fly down the way. I didn't know whether to be scared by it or impressed that the people getting shot at had lasted this long. Either way, it ended here. One cry rang out as the footsteps drew closer. That was just before the runners came into view. The first was by in a flash, obviously the fastest of his group. The second… They were about as fortunate as the one behind him.

I saw the blood as he took a burst of shots to the torso. He collapsed with a sickening crunch and splash. Once he'd ground to a stop, I could still see his legs. They didn't move again.

The moment was capped off by another pained cry. That was it. No more runners. No more bullets. Everything became deathly quiet. For a few seconds it was just me and the dust that had been kicked up.

"Check 'em."

The voice spoke English. My first urge upon hearing it was to emerge and ask them for help, a sign that my brain was burning out from all the absurdity that it was witnessing. My rational side quickly swept in and reminded me that, whoever that was, they had a gun. They'd just shot the last guy they met. Crawling out of a pipe while they probably still had fingers on triggers seriously wasn't the smartest idea.

The footsteps were slow, methodical. It took them an agonizingly long time to reach me. When they got audibly close, I moved my hands to my head and clutched the sides of it. I had to control myself. My breathing couldn't be too panicked, I couldn't whimper, and I certainly couldn't cough or sneeze in the dusty air.

The tickle in my nose had differing ideals, however.

So there I was, trying my darnedest not to sneeze at the worst possible time. In spite of my thoughtful efforts to control myself, I couldn't summon the presence of mind to cover my nose or just stop breathing – anything to keep myself from startling someone with a fucking gun. But no. I was too focused on the gunmen as they approached. Each footstep was louder than the last. I wanted to know how close they were, but I was too deep in the cylinder to be certain.

Then they stepped where I could see them.

The revelation that they weren't human came only milliseconds before… well…

"HeuACKCHOO!"

What can I say? I sneeze hardcore.

"S'kak!" was the alien swear that corresponded with my bodily function. That, followed by a two-round discharge of the speaker's assault rifle. Two rounds – one went somewhere I couldn't see, while the second blazed so close by my head that I actually felt my hair move. And I didn't have long hair.

I fell back, having immediately felt the need to retreat from the figure as quickly as I possibly could. Unfortunately, the mounting combination of internal problems that I've been mentioning, plus the fact that I was crouched in a compressed space, led to me falling nowhere except down. I skittered away from them, my eyes transfixed on their alien form. A thick, armor-wearing torso with lithe, spikey limbs. The armor was crimson, bearing an insignia – a white circle around a black background, and crimson symbol in the foreground. I didn't know it, but I recognized the body well enough.

A turian.

A flashlight beam from the rifle's end interrupted whatever inexplicable thoughts were running through my awareness at the moment. I was blinded, sent reeling around so that I was huddled up with my head nestled against the floor. My hands were still clutching my head, and my eyes were shut so tight that it hurt. Tiny whimpers were the only sound I could make. I was so scared, so raw…

Death seemed certain.

"What is it?"

I just sat there, not looking, waiting to lose something I'd always taken for granted.

"…" the turian spoke in a tongue I couldn't grasp.

Nothing seemed to come of it. Between my heart pounding and apprehensive sweat starting to itch at my skin, the situation became almost unbearable.

"Screw it, then. Let's head home."

"…"

My eyes opened as their conversation carried on. They found the cylinder devoid of the flashlight. I unclutched my head, running on pure confusion. My ears perked up, hearing footsteps headed away. Finally, taking a breath, I flipped over and looked out. The turian was gone. They were leaving. _They were leaving and I wasn't dead._

I fell flat onto my back, letting that breath out. Dust flew up once again, and I watched it float around in the miniscule light.

"…How?"

That was all I could think as I breathed shallowly. How? How had this happened?

_And why is it happening to me?_

* * *

**There you go. 1000 more words than last time.**

**The next time we'll progress more into an actual story than last time. We'll meet characters, discover some important facts, etc.**


	3. Chapter 3

**More faves, follows, and reviews! Thanks again everyone!**

**Also, just a brief notice before we get started, you may have noticed that I moved the rating down from M to T. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm probably skirting the line between the two ratings, but considering that there won't be any depictions of hardcore violence or sexy times, I've decided that the M rating is unnecessary. Plus, it's a drag on the views.**

**That said, let's continue...**

* * *

_**Dust in the Mass Effect**_

**Chapter 3**

"**Load Game"**

* * *

I woke up without even realizing I'd passed out.

I didn't feel any better, though I honestly wasn't sure what to compare my condition to. I'd never randomly woken up in an indoor scrapyard, ridden down a mountain of metal, slammed my face into the floor, and then run for my life away from a gunfight before. All of that, plus I'd never met an alien before. Shit, I wasn't even sure if that last one was even real. I must have been pretty delirious by that point. Surely I'd imagined that turian.

As I blearily poked my head out of the cylinder, however, I caught a good look at the man that had been downed right in front of me earlier. It wasn't a man at all – or, rather, it wasn't a _human_ man. Furry brown face, four dark eyes, pointed ears, no real hair. I'd seen enough digital batarians to tell a real one when I saw it, as crazy as that sounds.

The poor guy was dead, obviously. This, however, was a fact that I was slow to uptake. Once I'd managed to stop gawking at the poor slob, I noticed that he was lying in a pool of his own blood. I suddenly became thankful of the thick dusty metal smell that naturally seemed to be consuming the place, or else I'd probably have been gagging on a much harsher smell. I did wind up gagging, though it was more because of the gory mess than anything else. I didn't waste any more time in clearing out.

I sprinted away from the cylinder and the bodies, trying my hardest not to look at them the whole way. I'd always found batarians' four eyes creepy, and the fact that they were now dead and glazed multiplied the factor exponentially. In fact, I dare say that it made them actually frightening – an adjective that was quickly beginning to become appropriate for the entire scrapyard. Aliens? Holy shit. Gun battles? Get me the hell out of here! Air filled with stenches of rust, blood, and God knows what else? I would literally rather be anywhere else, sans somewhere inconceivably more dangerous.

Of course, wanting to be somewhere implied that I had somewhere else I could go. How was I supposed to get somewhere else if I didn't know where I was in the first place? I guessed that I could just start walking towards the sheets of darkness that served as walls in this place, but those seemed miles away. Given the maze-like grid of the scrapyard, I'd probably die of thirst before I got to them. Even then, I was still assuming that they actually contained an exit. What if I struggled my ass over there just to find that it was a wall with nothing remotely similar to a door? I'm pretty sure I'd die right on the spot.

Thinking about it made me cover my face in grief. I felt awful. My face was still sore from getting pounded into the muck, and my stomach was starting to growl from missing dinner. Just the mere thought of that quesadilla I didn't get made my mouth water. I needed that, a hot shower, a green tea, and a few good rounds of some violent video game multiplayer.

_I need to get home._

Home… I'd left everything behind, it seemed. I didn't even have my clothes, let alone anything actually important. My phone, my money, my friends, and my _family_ – I'd lost them. I'd lost them without any cause whatsoever. And where had it dumped me? With turians and batarians and assault rifles in some bloody scrapyard. Where the fuck was I that meant there were Mass Effect aliens here? Had I been mindfucked into the video game?! The mere concept seemed ridiculous! People don't just turn around and appear in a video game, not unless they're the subject of a crazy fanfiction!

The thought that I might actually be a fanfiction character made me shunt that train of thought clean out of my mind. Instead, I focused on my surroundings. There had to be something I could do to help me get out of here. What about the rigs? I looked up, finding the nearest one immobile and relatively far away. Even then, I couldn't recall seeing anything on it where someone might actually be manning it. If I ran this place, I'd have those things controlled from booths elevated above the actual workspace. Safer that way.

What, then? What was going to get me out of here? I simply refused to believe that I was stranded down here with no hope of escape. The mountains of junk were keeping me from looking ahead, though. I had been wrong to think that the paths between the junk ran the grid like the rigs. As I walked, I found more blocked or obscured paths than I did complete intersections. So I looked up as I walked. I looked up, and then I saw it.

Smoke. There was a smoke trail rising up in front of one particularly well-lit pile. Was it a campfire? A bonfire, even? I couldn't tell. Still, somebody had to be there, I realized. Someone was running that fire, and they would know how to get out of here.

I oriented myself in that direction. It was strange. My brain was running a mile a minute, something that was common for me, but I wasn't really sure what I was thinking. Seeking out a random fire in a space where only hobos and criminals would make fires was stupid. Unfortunately, I wasn't exactly in the best condition to be thinking rationally. After all, I'd freshly seen aliens that had been fictional to me as recently as yesterday. Shit, I'd seen _aliens_, period! Rationality and I had clearly been divorced by this point.

So, rationale having gone the other way, I went on investigating the source of that fire.

What I found was rather… _unexpected_.

There was a clearing, as if the pile for that sector simply hadn't been allowed to grow to the obscene levels of the others. This left a lot of space, room which appeared to have been used to, of all things, colonize the area. Shanties had been thrown together out of scrap sheet metal and canvas. There didn't seem to be anyone around, though. Some of the constructs look derelict, I noticed as I walked along the camp's perimeter. I could still see the smoke, which seemed to be rising up out of the camp's center, and I could hear somebody talking rather loudly. Perhaps everyone was there, keeping warm around the fire. It seemed strange to think that, though. While the air wasn't exactly summer-like, I definitely didn't feel the need to snuggle up and get cozy.

It didn't take long after finding the camp for me to come across a lane that went straight through its heart. Down it I could see the smoke rising out from behind a small crowd of people. I was hesitant to join them, as anyone would be after going through what I had. Sadly, I wasn't in the position to be choosy. I could either go to this place and find help or keep walking and potentially starve. The rumbling in my stomach was kind enough to make a suggestion, one that I couldn't help but sigh and follow.

I walked down the lane slowly and quietly. The constructs here looked considerably more occupied than those closer to the outside. There still didn't appear to be anyone inside them, though. Whatever that fire was, it must have attracted the entire camp. That made things even stranger. Not only was it not cold, but the crowd around the fire wasn't nearly big enough to fit the entire camp. Not to suggest that the camp was very big, but it could probably have held a solid community at max capacity. Around the fire I saw no more than ten individuals.

As I drew close to the gathering, I noticed something else that was strange. I wasn't the only thing being quiet. Whoever had been talking before seemed to have given it a rest. The only noise this close was that of the fire. It didn't sound like wood burning, though. Didn't smell like it, either. I'd have figured that a good wood fire would cut through the dead metal stench, but, whatever was coming to my nose as I got closer seemed to blend in and add to the stink instead.

Just before I could cover my nose, however, I managed to get a glimpse past the crowd and see what the fire was.

It had been going for a while, as my time in walking reminded me. I'd seen this before, though. Slats laid out, covered with sheets, and then burnt. The remains were almost completely ash by the time I arrived, but it didn't take a genius to tell what had happened. This wasn't a campfire. It was a funeral pyre.

Seven slats, I counted. Seven people were dead. Two of them were noticeably shorter than the rest. Children? Surely not. But what if…?

I don't know what the proper way for me to react was. Should I have retched in disgust? Should I have sought out and offered my condolences those grieved – likely everyone, given the dead-to-living ratio. I didn't know then and I still don't know now. All I could do was watch everything burn. The smell engrained itself into my conscience. This, I will never forget, was the stench of true death.

I stood and stared at the pyre for what felt like hours. People began to trickle away as time passed. Even the flames, after a point, called it quits. All that was left were the slats and outlines of ash, all of which was promptly hauled away for disposal. This just left me and one other guy standing in the center of the camp.

"It was the Blood Pack," he spoke suddenly. I jumped a little, looking up to him. He was a tall and strong looking man, human, middle-aged, hazel eyes, and hair of brown that was lined with silvery gray at the edges. He was dressed noticeably better than I was, what with actually having a shirt and pants instead of my now filthy jumpsuit.

The Blood Pack was, as my knowledge of Mass Effect rolled, a ruthless gang of krogan and vorcha. The latter made up the gang's majority, if I recalled correctly. Vorcha were, to put it simply, the crazy rabid coyotes of the galaxy – probably not the best metaphor, but you get the picture. Krogan, meanwhile, were notably powerful tortoise-like people who excelled at combat and little else. Combine these two and you had the makings of something akin to a plague that dealt bullets instead of illness.

"Killed them while the rest of us were away," the man went on. "We got back while they were busy trying to find something to stake the bodies on. Luckily, any good scavenger travels well-armed. Vorcha bastards didn't even see us coming."

_Scavengers…_

"Not that it mattered. They still killed nearly half the group. John, Varlus, Blee, Hob, Seeve, and the freaking kids, Kory and Quess. Damn monsters, those Blood Pack. Every single one of them. Never met one that was worth the shit on my boots. If they ain't killing good people, then they're grabbing them up for the slave trade or worse. I can deal with running drugs and guns, but dealing in life is about as debauched as shit gets."

He kicked a spray of dust onto where the pyre had been.

"And now we have to move on somehow."

The man sounded hollow. It was obvious he felt guilty for the deaths. Seeing the others in the group, he was obviously the most capable. I could envision him being a soldier at some point, or maybe just a mercenary. The way his eyes were angled, brow furrowed, expression bitter and gutted. This wasn't the first time he'd seen something like this, but he hated it all the same.

"…_you never get used to seeing dead civilians."_ The voice of a woman came to me.

We stood there for a few more minutes, watching as nothing really happened. Some of the others, mostly batarians, gathered together and began dealing cards. The rest seemed to just shrink away. The air was still thick with the unpleasant smell of those passed, and it likely would be so for quite a while.

"So…" the man spoke up after a few hands of the card game had gone. "Where'd you walk out from?"

I was hesitant to reply. I looked up at him again, feeling short in spite of my five feet and eleven inches. He had to have been at least six-three, probably more.

"Bah," he waved the question off. "You ain't gotta say. Let me guess. You're down here trying to strike it rich 'cause you heard the scrapyards of Omega hold hidden pirate vaults filled with untold riches. Is that it?"

My heart almost stopped at that claim. Omega? That explained the Blood Pack, but _damn_. Of all the places to end up…

I let out a disparaged sigh at this revelation, grinding my teeth. Once again, the primary thoughts in my head were 'How the hell is this happening?' and 'Why is it happening to me?' I was sure that there was some maniac out there who would have _loved_ to get fucked out of reality and wake up on the most dangerous space station in the galaxy. I, my mind told itself, was not that maniac.

"Come on," the man put a hand on shoulder and shoved me in a particular direction. We started walking. "My name's Nolan. I run this particular establishment of scavengers. If you want to work out of this camp, you answer to me. I find out you're keeping shit behind my back, you're outta here. I find out you've been working with another group, you're outta here. I find out you've been disrespectful to other members of the group, you're outta here. I find out you've been touching my guns…"

"…I'm outta here?" It was the first time I'd spoken since my encounter with the turian.

"You catch on quick," Nolan nodded as we approached the last shanty on the lane. "I guess you can live in here, though there's really no rule about where you sleep, so long as you're not bugging anyone."

Before I cold reply, the man grabbed me under the chin and held my face where he could look at it. I didn't know what to think as he looked me square in the eye, taking a full five seconds to finally slap his arm away. It wasn't actually effective, but he did take it as a prompt to release me.

"You've got a sullen look about you, Dust."

_What?_

"Dust?" I questioned the sudden nickname.

"You won't tell me where you came from or why you're here. Why would I even bother with your name?" he reasoned. "Also, you're covered in enough crap to fill a varren trough. Be glad I didn't call you 'Shit'."

I scowled and crossed my arms, suddenly getting the feeling that I was going to be treated like a kid for the time being. It was a feeling I was used to, harkening back to my days before learning what being an adult meant. Nolan ignored me, though, instead looking toward another shanty and letting out a summoning whistle.

"Cockney! Get out here!"

I looked to the shanty in question just in time to see a shabby fellow emerge. He had a shaved head, tan skin, and clothes that sat somewhere between Nolan's 'clean enough' and my 'covered in shit'. He seemed shady, but I guess shady people were exactly what you should expect to find crawling around in a dank junkyard.

"What's up?" Cockney asked once he'd made his way over. Before you ask, no. He didn't have an accent.

"This guy's the newbie," Nolan pointed at me, serving to increase my scowl's level. "Since you're still on thin ice from that bullshit with the palladium, you gotta show him the ropes."

Cockney wasted no time looking me over with one of his eyebrow raised. He seemed less than impressed, though saying that implies that I was remotely impressive to begin with.

"Nice face," he 'complimented' me after a moment. My face, for those confused, was still in a state of disrepair after eating floor during my junk surfing experience. "You the one who rode down the pile on that slab earlier?"

I tried not to act flustered. How had he known that?

"Uh… Yeah."

"Nice," he nodded in approval. I remained skeptical. "Need to work on the dismount, though. Landing on your face in a place like this is a good way to get… Well, y'know."

We all looked back to where the pyre had been.

"Go get him cleaned up, why don't you?" Nolan interjected before we could all get properly depressed again. That said, however, he began to walk off. "Until he makes a week's pay, his skin's on your hands."

"You're a slave driver, Nolan!" Cockney quipped in response.

"You're gonna think 'slave driver' when I sell you off to the eezo mines, you little prick!"

With that, the tall man took to his own business. I turned to Cockney, whom was fishing out a cigarette.

"You gotta light?" he asked.

"No."

"What good are you, then?"

I lost another exasperated sigh as the man pulled a lighter out of his shirt pocket and lit up. He took a long drag and then, in a move that shouldn't have surprised me, blew the smoke in my face.

"Come on," he grumbled, leading me over to his shanty. "What's your name?"

"Nolan called me Dust."

"Yeah, he does that. Gives people nicknames and shit, I mean," he told me between drags. "My name's not actually Cockney, but he calls me that so much that it might as well be. It really depends on how good your real name is, or how much he likes you."

"Which is which?"

"Huh?" he didn't understand me.

"Does he call you by your real name if he likes you, or vice-versa?"

"Dunno," he shrugged. By now we'd reached the sheet metal bungalow. It wasn't much to behold, but I guess it's better than being out in the open. Not that I actually got to go inside, though. As we arrived, he pointed to a chair next to the entrance. "Sit."

I sat while he went inside. I heard some rustling around, and a few seconds later he emerged with a stool and a first-aid kit.

"So, I'll ask you again. What's your name?" he kept the conversation rolling as he went to work on my facial injuries. They'd been stinging dully this entire time, probably because of the dust.

"…Lyle," I eventually caved, not wanting to keep something so trivial a secret.

"Eugh," he sneered at it. I scowled again. "I'd stick with 'Dust' over that. At least that has a cool sound to it. Makes you sound like a ninja."

"A ninja?" I questioned as he took a towel to my face for cleaning.

"Better than sounding like a middle-aged car salesman," he supposed. I wasn't convinced, but also didn't feel like arguing. "And what about my other question? What good are you? You know anything about salvage?"

"Not a thing."

"Thought so. Most of us didn't when we showed up. The scrapyards of Omega aren't exactly big on qualifications, especially for an outfit like this," he explained as he put a sealing agent onto the cut in my cheek. "You'll manage, though. Once you've learned what to look for, it's not too difficult. Boring as shit, though. You hear shit drop from the chutes, you drop what you're doing, and you go. Maybe you find something worth a chunk of credits, maybe you don't find anything. Maybe you don't even get there first, and you have to clear out before the Talons shoot you down."

"Talons?" I inquired, only vaguely familiar with the name.

"Yeah. They're our main competitors in this sector. Small-time merc group, mostly turian, has small hands in everything from weapons to slaves, though they're best business is red sand."

_Turians…_

"Dark red armor, same color insignia?"

"That's them, the precocious raptors," Cockney gave me an uneasy look. "You see some?"

"Nearly got cacked by some a little while go," I thought back to then. I really wasn't sure how long ago that had been. I think I passed out right after, and then I spent a good amount of time walking around the grid. For all I knew, the gunfight had been several hours ago. "They were chasing some batarians around. They, uh… shot them."

"Three batarians? Skinny, not much to 'em?"

"Y-Yeah."

"I've seen 'em. Just some dumbass fortune hunters, looking for the Platinum."

"Platinum?"

"You ain't heard?" he looked at me cock-eyed. "They say that some big-time batarian pirate lord stashed a hoard of platinum down here on his ship, the _Platinum Grogjorl_."

The second word in that proper noun managed to throw me for a loop.

"And now you know why we just call it 'the Platinum'," Cockney laughed. A grogjorl, as I later learned, was a strange bird native to the batarian homeworld of Khar'shan. Apparently it had feathers that glistened, not unlike precious metals. "Every few weeks we get a few idiots down here looking for it. The legend says that there's enough metal in it to put you up for the rest of your life."

"Sounds too good to be true," I gave my two cents.

"Sounds like a wild goose chase, except the goose is actually a ship and is supposedly buried under a metric fuckton of debris. Even if you found it, you wouldn't be able to get it out without some serious machinery."

I looked up to the nearest claw rig.

"Those giant disturbances of the peace are run by Aria's people," Cockney noted with a particular amount of disgust. "Technically, she owns the yard, but she doesn't do much to stop us from working. Just make sure you don't get in the claw's way. I saw a guy go nuts and try to ride it up. He lost his grip three-fourths of the way up. Broke every fucking bone in his body."

For some reason, I suddenly started to think that working in the scrapyard wasn't exactly the safest option. However, I thought as Cockney sealed up the cut on my brow, it was bound to be better for my health than wandering my ass out into Omega's proper and getting my ass killed in gangland activities. Seriously, though, where else could I go? Nolan pretty much conscripted me into service, and I most certainly did _not_ want to work as a damned scavenger. BUT, while it is a shitty and dangerous job, it's still just that – a fucking job, aka that thing I was struggling to get before the last several hours came to pass. If I was ever going to improve my situation, then I would need money.

Honestly, I really didn't feel like I had a choice.

"There," Cockney pulled back from my face. "That should stave off infection."

"Thanks," I offered through a sigh. The side of my face was now numb, but at least I didn't have to worry about it. "Welp… When do we start?"

Instead of words, he gestured towards a distant point of the ceiling. I followed, looking up to find a distant hole opening up over one of the junk piles. Red cautions lights flashed as large pieces of wreckage tumbled through the passage. As the debris crashed down loudly, it abruptly occurred to me that the next period of my life was going to be spent digging through trash.

_This isn't going to stop sucking, is it?_

* * *

**And things finally get settled in... sort of.**

**Allow me to take this opportunity to thank Warhammer 2-4 again for his incredible work as a beta-reader. He also does incredible work as a writer. If you haven't checked out his story _Temporal Leap: Incipiens_, then I can't recommend it enough.**

**Thanks for reading! Next chapter's gonna be a little different. Less moment-to-moment, more passing of time, etc.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Holy crap! The fave and follow numbers on this thing are bigger than I expected. Thanks a lot, everyone!**

* * *

_**Dust in the Mass Effect**_

**Chapter 4**

"**Loading…"**

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It was hard.

You might think that digging through trash would be one of the more laid back occupations in the galaxy. You would be wrong. Imagine it like this:

You've just barely gotten yourself to sleep. Your back hurts, your 'bed' is lumpy as hell, and every single muscle in your body is sore from venturing around to uproot the most valuable of the trashes. Then, without any real warning, you hear a giant crash of metal of the in the distance. This is your work whistle. You must now get up, gear up, and head out in hopes that you can beat those dirty Talon mercs to it. If you can, then maybe they'll back off and let you sort through it in peace. If you can't, then you have to back off and pray they won't shoot at you. If you're lucky and the Talons aren't there, then you have something else to worry about. Is anything that just dropped even valuable? Usually it is, but sometimes it isn't. Even when it is, how much is it worth? Is it enough to eat off of? Hopefully. Can you get enough supplies to last until the next good drop? Maybe. Will you have to cut back in expenditures order to actually turn a decent profit? Definitely.

I found myself in debt to Nolan the very first day. Necessary gear includes, at the bare minimum, a functional omni-tool and a translator so you can understand the barks of your batarian coworkers. I, of course, had neither of these. They were not cheap. My first payday, a full week after my arrival, was cut by half to take care of the expenses involved in loaning me the items, even if they were both used. Apparently they'd been the property of someone called 'Buster' at some point. I was vaguely fortunate to learn that Buster was not one of the Blood Pack's victims, but someone who'd disappeared off into the yard one day, never to return. Cockney claimed that the man had always been a hard worker, and, if I didn't live up to his reputation, he'd come back and kill me for them.

Phantoms or not, this meant that I made a pittance every week. The exact number would make you cringe. Suffice to say, I wasn't doing much more than eating and sleeping in my spare time. Food came out of cans on good days, out of tubes on bad days, and tasted like grasshoppers every day. Drinks were ridiculous as well. Water? Not in our scrapyard. The shit we got… well… I called it 'tang' to make me feel better. It tasted more like ass-flavored cough medicine. Sometimes the batarians would order in some good stuff on occasion, but I wasn't exactly on their list of people to share with.

So yeah. My standard of living plummeted. Better than being _dead_, though. If I had anything going for me, that was it.

T

"Get a move on, Duster!"

Scavenging and salvaging was a lot like searching for seashells, except only about two percent of the shells were worth taking, the beach was an enormous breeding mound for tetanus, and an angry alien was constantly yelling at you to do it faster. Oh, and some of the shells needed to be fixed by a specialist before they could be worth anything. Just like looking for seashells, except a way bigger pain in the ass. The process was simple. We – meaning the four of us on the 'scavenger team' – would pour over the pile that had received the most recent drop. If you found something useful, hooray. If you didn't, tough shit.

"Y'know," I wheezed to Cockney as we struggled to find anything worth more than its weight in materials. "I could've sworn you told me to be slow and methodical about this."

"I did," the man chuckled. "Grask is just bustin' your balls. Ignore him."

Easier said than done. Grask was our supervisor, and he made sure we knew it. If he wasn't shouting at us disdainfully, then he was berating whatever we'd brought down. He was a batarian, one of three in the eleven members of our group. What made him unique were two things. One, he was built like a train. If he really wanted to, he could probably punch a hole straight through a vorcha. Two, his false leg. You'd think that a one-legged man in the 22nd century would have access to some high-tech replacement options. This was not the case for Grask. His prosthetic limb was little more than a cleave of metal. This was probably why he was down there screaming at us instead of actually helping. How'd he lose it? I'll tell you later.

The point is that, in spite of his injury, he still managed to be intimidating as hell. Doubly so when you considered that the assault rifle he carried around had inferno rounds. He, as well as Nolan, ran security for us while we searched.

"So…" Cockney started. I looked up from what I was checking, finding him looking uncomfortable.

"What?"

"You've been here for a few weeks now," he remarked with a scowl. "I'm just wondering how long you're gonna stick around."

It was a strange question, I thought.

"Do people tend to leave in the first month?" I asked, returning to work at the same time. I could've sworn I'd just seen something that looked relatively new.

"Most leave within the first couple of days," he shook his head. "It ain't easy work, and it don't pay well."

I pulled up a small container as he spoke. Normally, a box like this would open at the press of a button. This one was busted, of course. Still, it wouldn't be the first one I'd sent down for recovery. I put it aside for later.

"Well, it's not like I have anywhere else to go," I answered after a moment.

"Seriously?" he seemed a little shocked by that claim. "You're what? Eighteen?"

"Twenty-one."

"Still too young to not have anywhere to turn," he decided for me. "I know you ain't one of them lifer orphans. You'd be in a gang or slaved by now."

Now it was my turn to scowl. I'd been very tight-lipped about my origin, and that wasn't about to change now. Cockney was usually pretty lax around me, but today he seemed to be a little off. It was making me nervous. If I trusted anyone in this camp, it was him. Still, I wasn't about to go telling him that I'd mysteriously transmigrated through time and space to wind up in this scrap yard. The last thing I needed was to get thrown out of camp because they all thought I was crazy.

"I'm just a guy," I went for the route of 'spout bullshit until he gives up'. "I got in trouble, and now I'm here getting myself out of it."

Technically, that wasn't a lie. As far as I was concerned, I really was in trouble and this really was my only way to get out of it. In retrospect, this was incorrect. I could have always just asked Nolan for directions out of this place. I know I wouldn't be the first. Often was the time an errant treasure hunter would pass through, unable to ascertain his/her way out. The only problem with that was that, even if I got out, I _still_ didn't have anywhere to go. At least down here I was making money and not getting shot on a regular basis. I heard Omega was rather bad in the latter regard.

"Oh, c'mon," Cockney rolled his eyes. "What's the hurt in telling me?"

"Listen, man," I stopped him. "I'm not gonna pry into your backstory, so why're you prying into mine? Especially since I can say with full authority that it isn't interesting in any way."

"If it isn't interesting, then, and I repeat, what's the hurt in telling me?"

"Hey!" Grask interrupted before I could lose my cool. "Less squawking, more hauling, assholes!"

We both went back to work after that, not saying anymore on the subject for that day.

But yeah. That was the average day of the scavenger named 'Dust'. In fact, I dare say that those were the good days. Those were the days that made me money and got me one step closer to something else.

The bad days? Well…

"That's close enough, trash!"

There was something sinister about a turian's voice coming through the relays of his helmet. All Talon mercenaries wore their armor when they were on scavenging runs. It was good grade stuff, too. According to our salarian tech specialists, even the best rifle our group owned couldn't pierce their shields in single shot. Against them, we were utterly outmatched.

Military experience in our group numbered up to five individuals. The rest of us amounted to civilians. They had at least seven people, all but two of which were turians. Fun fact about the turians and their society, military service was mandatory. If you saw one carrying a gun, you might as well assume that it knows how to kill you with it in the most efficient way possible. Sure enough, they all had guns, and the appearance of our group was a cue to draw them out of their holsters.

Nolan, always at the front of our pack, stood tall before the Talon turian. The merc had a rifle trained on the man. A flex of its finger would kill him. Nolan had no armor or shields. He didn't even bother pointing his own rifle forward. Nobody in our group did. Grask looked like he was ready start incinerating, but even he knew that we didn't stand a chance in a straight fight.

"This drop is Talon property. Turn your operation around and no one gets hurt."

That was the ultimatum. Every damn time, he would say that. Nolan would stand there, glare at him for a second, and then tell us to head back. The walks back were always the worst. The instant we were out of earshot, Grask would start going off. The rest of us would just sulk, all thinking the same thing. We had just wasted time and energy for nothing. Nolan would always tell us to keep a look out for anything useful on the way back, but we rarely found anything then.

As we'd walk, I would involuntarily think about when I'd been cornered in that cylinder by that one Talon. I'd been spared that day. Even if I hadn't been able to understand what it was saying, I knew that much. It had seen me. It pointed its gun at me. I'd been defenseless, but they'd held back. What did that mean? Were they more honorable than their aggression towards the group suggested? Or maybe they just didn't think I was worth the bullets.

In the end, I decided it was best not to ponder. I had more important things to worry about, like when my next meal was going to be.

T

This went on for a solid month. In that month I learned many things, ranging from the date to how batarians celebrate birthdays. The date? According to Earth's Terran Coordinated Universal calendar, it was September of the year 2182. How do batarians celebrate birthdays? I could tell you, but you'd never believe me.

The date was significant to me. I was just enough of a nerd to know that the plot of the game that was Mass Effect started in 2183. With it already September, that timeframe wasn't exactly far off. Not that it really mattered. For one thing, there was no way I could afford to get off Omega before the year was out. Secondly, even if I did escape, where would I go and what would I do? I wasn't about to load up and fight a war just because I knew it was about to happen. Sure, I was pretty smart, if by 'pretty smart' you mean I knew my ass from my elbow. I knew how to handle a gun, I had a basic grasp of elementary squad tactics, and, most importantly of all, I knew how the pieces were fated to fall. Did that make me a soldier? Hell no!

If anything, it all made me just want to curl up and hide. I knew that my direct involvement in the Reaper conflict would result in nothing less than my death and possible indoctrination. I mean, just look at Saren, Benezia, and the Illusive Man. They all tried to fuck with that shit, and all they got were bullets to the face for their troubles. Of course, that train of thought assumed that I could live long enough to get indoctrinated. If this crazy scrapyard didn't kill me in some sick and twisted way, then whatever lay just beyond was likely eager to do the job. That's what I thought at the time, anyway.

So, instead of pursuing great justice and whatnot, I played poker with Cockney and the guys. Surely that was safe and not life-threatening in any way. Right?

"Cards above the table, Duster," Grask growled at me from across the table.

I quickly hobbled my cards up where everyone else could see their backs. I was always on edge when we played cards. Thankfully, we weren't using real money. I'd have been broke in a heartbeat if we had. Grask was great at calling bluffs, and the two batarians that played with him were about as expressive as drywall. On my side of the table were fellow humans Cockney and Dirk. Dirk was a red sand addict, so he wasn't much competition. Cockney was okay, if only because he wasn't as intimidated by Grask as the rest of us. The two other batarians were Dev, a younger fellow who rarely spoke in more than single-word sentences, and Brot, Grask's right hand man.

We had just finished drawing, which meant it was time for the second round of betting.

"Today was a shit haul," Brot grumbled as he opened.

"If it were a lucrative business, we'd have more than eleven people," Grask grumbled as well, watching carefully as Dirk saw the bet. It was notable because Dirk tended to fold on the second round.

"We need more hands," Brot kept on. I silently saw the bet as he continued. "It won't be long before the Talons move in and take us to the-!"

"They won't do that," Cockney cut him off, laying down a raise in the process. "Aria would move in if they took control of the entire sector. She owns this place, not no damn fucking Talons."

Brot, Dirk, and I both saw the raise. I had a pair of queens. Not too shabby, I believed.

"But are they smart enough to know that?" Brot kept arguing in spite of his elimination. "The Blood Pack came and picked a fight, and we shredded them good and proper. Who's to say that the Talons won't hit us now that we have decreased capabilities?"

"Stupid," Dev gave his one cent as he saw the bet.

"Exactly!" Cockney nodded appreciatively. "Omega only has one rule."

"'_Don't fuck with Aria,_'" half the table said at the same time as Grask raised it another bit.

"And taking us down, claiming our territory, and eating our share of the take, they'd start generating more revenue," Cockney went on. "Aria would take notice. The outfit they've got here wouldn't last a week. Then the big bitch would probably disrupt the operations in their district, demand higher cuts from their business. They don't pay, she dices the entire operation."

"Extreme," Dev said as Brot folded.

"Typical asari bullshit," Dirk scoffed, raising the bet two more bits.

I folded, sighing.

"It explains why they don't shoot us on sight, at least," Cockney mumbled as he and Dev also folded.

"It's all a load of shit," Grask commented before upping the ante by five more bits. The tension in the air suddenly thickened, enticed by the glare the massive batarian was shooting at Dirk. "Just like you, junkie. Bluffing won't work on me."

Dirk raised again. "Try me, four-eyes."

Grask growled – like _audibly_. Brot and Dev both looked perturbed as well. I'd be lying if I said I knew a lot about batarian culture, but I still knew not to talk shit about their eyes. Not unless I wanted to wake up inside a trash compactor. I shot Dirk a glance, wondering what he was thinking. It was one thing to outsmart Grask at poker. It was another thing entirely to outsmart Grask at poker and piss him off in the process.

"Fine then," Grask snarled once he'd regained his sense. He laid down an equal bet, and that was it. Show time.

Grask laid a full house. Three sevens and two kings.

Dirk laid a straight flush. Eight, nine, ten, jack, and queen of diamonds.

The junkie let out a shit-eating chuckle.

Grask flipped the table.

If you've never had a table flipped over onto you, take my word on it when I say that it sucks. Protip – when playing cards, don't sit directly across from the angriest member of the group.

I wound up falling over backwards in my chair as Dirk and Cockney scattered in either direction. My first thought was to get the table off of me, but then I found it jerked away. Looking up, I found Grask holding the plastic assembly up over his head. He tossed it like a flying disk, and I adjusted my viewing angle just in time to see the whole of it slam into Dirk. The junkie let out a terrified shriek as he spilled onto the floor like the bag of lemons he was.

Everything stilled after that. We all stared at the table, but Dirk didn't move. After a few seconds, Grask stormed off. Brot was quick after him, leaving the rest of us to pick up the displaced cards and chips.

"Could have been worse," Cockney stated as he pulled together all the cards. "The last guy who mocked him like that got knocked through a wall."

"Dumbass," was Dev's comment on the subject. I had to agree.

"Boys."

We all looked up to find Nolan standing over us. We all stood to meet him, but I couldn't help feeling like we'd just drawn the principal's attention with our shenanigans.

"What happened?" Nolan crossed his arms. The tone in his voice was understanding, much to my relief.

"Oh, you know how it is with Big G," Cockney was quick on the explanation. "Poor Dirk over there decided to run his trap. Beat out G's hand and got the whole table as a reward."

"Yeah…" Nolan said with a sigh before walking over to where Dirk had seemingly passed out. Moving the table, we found the addict splayed out with a stoned look on his face. A whiff of the air and check of his pants revealed that he had likely pissed himself at some point. The four of us stood over him for a few moments, wondering if he was actually knocked out or not.

Then, in an instance of cliché, he took a sudden inhale. His eyes went wide, as if he was still in trouble. We gave him a second to chill, after which he settled down and relaxed. It was almost funny, really. If I hadn't been so down at the time, I might have laughed.

"Did I win?" he asked.

"You almost won a free trip to the hospital, ya nutcase," Cockney joked as he helped the poor guy up. "What were you thinking?"

"I thought…" Dirk spoke slowly, which wasn't rare for him. "…it would be funny to see the big guy lose his cool over a card game."

"Risky," Dev berated.

"You're lucky he didn't lose his cool through your face," Nolan agreed with Dev. "We don't cover medical fees down here. If you ever get hurt, it's a long damn way to the hospital."

"As you've mentioned several times before, bossman," Dirk didn't seem to take the advisory seriously. "I need a hit. Anyone care to join me?"

We all stared at him with various levels of disapproval.

"No? A'ight, fuck y'all then."

Dirk walked off without another word, favoring where the table had struck him.

"What a guy," Cockney snickered, shaking his head. "Remind me why he still has a job."

"His dealer buys from us," Nolan remarked.

"Really? By that logic, we should get Dust hooked on speed and open up a new market."

Nolan refused to be amused by that. He just scowled and walked off, no doubt having more important shit to do. Dev left as well, probably having stopped caring long before.

"Aw, whatever," Cockney waved them off dismissively before looking to me. "C'mon. Let's get a drink."

We went over to his place for drinks. It wasn't much in terms of quality, just shitty lite beer, but it was better than the stupid tang. We kept quiet for a while as we sat out in front of his metal hut. I could tell that he was feeling sour, though. Nine days out of ten, Cockney was the most upbeat person in camp, though that wasn't saying much.

"…fucking ridiculous," he muttered randomly as I sucked the last few drops of beer out of my can.

"What is?" I bit.

"This-" He gestured to our surroundings. "All this bullshit around us."

I had to try and not roll my eyes.

"I mean think about it," he carried on. "Our lives are absurd. We live in the deepest fucking recesses of a scrapyard on the most criminally unlawful space station in the galaxy. We're lightyears away from home, working for shit money, eating and drinking shit that was made in a factory, and we could die at any goddammed minute."

"You drank before lunch again, didn't you?"

"Brot's right, y'know," he refused to stop. "Those Talons could walk right in here and blow us to fucking smithereens before we even had time to run and hide. We wouldn't even know what hit us! We could be _fucking dead_ fifteen seconds from now! And what difference would it make?! Who'd fucking care?!"

There were tears welling up in his eyes by this point. I wasn't sure whether this was really alcohol or a rapidly approaching existential crisis.

"Our lives…" Cockney said very slowly, leaning in with his red eyes wide and brow furrowed. "Our lives are _motherfucking_ ridiculous! And we take them so. Goddammed. _Seriously!_"

I felt myself unconsciously lean back, taken aback in a way I didn't understand.

Before the nut could say anything else, something green flew in and bounced off his skull. He straightened, stiff as a board, dropped his beer, and fell out of his chair. Next to him was the weapon, an empty batarian liquor bottle. Looking over from whence it came, I found an agitated Dev. I offered a hesitant wave, still astonished from Cockney's outburst. The batarian ignored me, turning back to his fellows.

Back to the downed Cockney, he didn't seem to be dead. He was breathing just fine, with the only apparent damage being a growing lump on his head. He was going to have one hell of a hangover, but not much else.

I set my empty can aside and hunched over. My hands came up and caught my face. All of the sudden, I didn't feel so good.

* * *

**Welp, that's chapter 4. A little shorter than last chapter, but things are still building.**

**Not much else to say. I will reiterate my thanks towards my good friend Warhammer 2-4 for his continued efforts beta-reading my chapters. If you haven't checked out his own SI, then you don't know what you're missing. It's called "_Temporal Leap: Incipiens_", and it's definitely one of the best new SIs in the archive.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks again to all reviewers, favers, and followers, as well as our lovely beta reader, Warhammer 2-4.**

* * *

_**Dust in the Mass Effect**_

**Chapter 5**

"**Data Corrupt"**

* * *

Time passed faster than I expected.

I don't know if that's a good thing. Even now, with that being ages ago, I still don't know whether or not the latency I picked up in the scrapyard was a good thing or not. On one hand, it kept me from agonizing over the time I was losing, and it allowed me to be at peace so long as I adhered to its trappings. On the other hand, I became… _different_. I'm not sure how else to say it. As strange as it sounds, I guess the only other way is to say that, as I adapted to the poverty and danger that came with being scavenger, I ceased being the person I'd been before arriving on Omega.

Instead, I was Dust.

It wasn't something I was unconscious to. It hadn't been long after my settling in with the camp that I realized I would need to change in order to survive. I just never thought I'd have to shed my humanity as well. It was a choice I never imagined having to make. When it confronted me… That was the moment I changed.

T

I was sitting with Cockney and a few others. We'd just finished cards for the day, with Grask and the other players having headed off to drink or what-have-them. I'd foregone a beer, instead resigning myself to a small cup of the tang. Ever since Cockney's outburst that day, the beer hadn't been sitting very well with me.

"The damn digger broke down again today," said the disgruntled mask of our resident quarian machinist. He was a far cry from the one you're thinking of. Blin'Got vas Nedas was not particularly cheerful or optimistic. Nolan liked to call him Grump, and for good reason. If he wasn't complaining about how our most useful tech appliances were about to break down, then he was complaining while he fixed them. The story was that he had been abandoned on Omega by his Migrant Fleet vessel because his captain got fed up with the constant line of attitude. Luckily for us, he had been a crewman on a ship that performed salvage operations for the Fleet. The digger he was in a rut over now was the same kind of machine he had worked back then. He could drive it and fix it like a pro, just as long as he had the right hoses and belts.

"We spoke to our guy upstairs. It'll take at least three days to find the replacement parts," remarked the only other human in the gathering besides me and Cockney. This was Eco, a thirty-something guy who had apparently served with Nolan in the Alliance at some point. He ran security for Blin and the digger, which operated away from the rest of the group. Why work away from the group, you ask? Because the damn thing wasn't reliable enough to move around. That's why. They operated only a short ways from camp, moving out the scrap metal that made up our camp's primary export.

"Expensive," Dev commented as he usually did.

"Yeah," Cockney nodded. "The hauls haven't been getting much better. If things don't turn around soon…"

"We'll be broke before your new year," Blin sighed.

We all stared at the gray-suited quarian for a moment.

"Well, I wasn't going to actually say it, but yeah," Cockney admitted before putting his head in his hands. "Either this shit turns around, or we're fucked."

"We can't get too down, guys," Eco put his hands up to try and ease the demoralized men. "All we need are a few good hauls, and things will be right back to looking up again. I mean, weren't we having this exact same conversation a few months ago?"

"Looking up?" Blin didn't subscribe to that opinion. "When have things _ever_ looked up? Ever since the kids died, this place has been a depressing pile of debris. And before that, it was just a depressing pile of debris where people could occasionally crack a smile."

No one else said anything to rebut him. I could see the disgust on Eco's face, likely spurred on by the machinist's poor example, but the man held his tongue. He was never one to voice a disparaging opinion, making it all the odder to me that he was partnered up with the perpetually petulant quarian.

I knew Blin was right about one thing, though. The only time people smiled in this place was when money was being counted. Any other time, this place was about as cheerful as a cemetery. The only things keeping any of us together were a vague solidarity and a lack of other options. At least, that's what Cockney told me. I never found out most of their stories, but Cockney assured me that, if the people here had anywhere else to go, they'd probably have gone by now. Not too dissimilar to my situation, I thought.

But then, no. I suddenly realized that it wasn't similar to me. These people had suffered actual hardships to wind up in this desolate place. Me? I'd been randomly dropped out of my life of relative luxury. I hadn't made a mistake, I just had bad luck. Compared to these people, I was truly fortunate.

The group stayed silent until a commotion stirred up on the other end of camp. There was yelling and scuffling, signs that normally indicated a fight of some kind. But then one voice kicked up that none of us recognized. This brought us all to standing, followed by running over to see what was happening.

As we approached, it became apparent that the noises were coming from behind the supply building. It was just as we arrived that a rather scrawny turian was tossed out from behind the shanty, basically spelling out the entire situation. He was a burnout, I guessed. A deadbeat loser who had nothing but himself to run on. He probably got tossed down here by the last people he tried to steal from, and now he was trying to steal from us.

"Blasted thief!" Grask yelled as he and Brot walked out from the same place.

"You think you can steal from us?!" Brot interjected, giving the downed avian a solid kick to its side.

"Aah!" the turian screamed, clutching at its affected parts. I'll tell you now, this was the sorriest looking turian I've ever seen. It was comparatively smaller than the ones I'd seen, had blue blood leaking out of several unchecked injuries, and part of its head crest was actually broken off. Hell, he didn't even have a shirt. The normally lithe and sterling exoplates of the turian were scuffed and matted with all sorts of muck and grime.

"I-I'm sorry!" he pleaded as he struggled to move away from the imposing batarians. His voice was ragged, likely from malnourishment. Unfortunately for him, Eco and Nolan moved in to keep him from making any moves. "I'll go! J-J-Just don't hurt me!"

"Grask…" Nolan looked to the batarian enforcer somberly.

"Caught him trying to peel back a loose panel on the supply house! He was stealing from us, Nolan!"

"I heard him say it!" Brot backed Grask up. "He said that he couldn't wait to get his hands on some of our food!"

The batarians were incensed, and with good reason. Stealing was a capital offense amongst the broke, and we were getting as close to broke as we could bear. This one wasn't the first thief we'd caught, either. As usual, Nolan had only one thing to say on the matter.

"Hold him down."

"What?! NO!"

The turian surged, realizing what the order implied. Brot and Eco leapt into action, however, stopping the poor bastard before he could do anything else. He was too weak to fight them. They pinned him down on his knees, with Grask coming behind and placing his good foot down hard on the back of the avian's leg. The turian screamed in pain as, with a loud crack, his leg gave way.

"I'm sorry, son, but this camp has zero tolerance for thieves like yourself," Nolan remarked as the sod groaned and writhed in the clutches of his captors.

"Oh… Oh spirits…" I could hear the turian mumble between sobs.

The whole situation made my stomach churn. I'd seen this before, mind, but this time was different. Every other time, the number of which was three, the captive had either been a vorcha or a former merc – the truest of scum if Cockney and the rest were to be believed. This guy, though? He was just a hungry fellow without anywhere else to turn. It was either this or the cold, dark abyss. He didn't look like a gang member or a murderer. He just looked tired and worn.

And yet Nolan drew his pistol.

"P-Please…" the defeated turian begged. His leg had been snapped like a twig, but he was still conscious.

"Leaving you alive is bad for our longevity," Nolan spoke again. "You ain't fit to work, and we ain't got the time or money to help you. We set you free, and then our enemies find you. The vorcha or the Talons. You sell us out, and then we die."

That was the truth we all accepted living under Nolan's leadership. It was the same thing he said every time this happened. Seeing it now, however, made me question how sound a philosophy it was.

The turian's head hung. He had given up.

Nolan held the pistol in his hand. He stared at it for about fifteen seconds straight. It was here that I noticed the entire camp had gathered. Cockney, Blin, Dev, Dirk, Brot, Grask, Eco, Nolan, the salarian techies, and I were all standing here, waiting to watch this poor soul die.

"Dust."

I almost didn't hear the man say my name. Next thing I knew, the grip of the pistol was being offered to me.

"You had the worst pull this week," Nolan said to me, his eyes firm and serious as they appraised my blank expression. Now I was the one staring at the pistol. He wanted me to do it.

"I…" My voice was solemn, slight. I could barely process what I wanted to say.

"If he'd stolen food, you would have gotten decreased rations," the man reminded me, his voice now louder than it should have been. "He deserves no mercy from you."

I heard my breaths, felt my heartbeat. What was this feeling? Was it fear? Anxiety? What did it mean? Of course I was nervous. I never was one to be the center of attention, and now I had a blood red one shining right over me. But why did I feel so… so _cold_? It was like my blood had turned to ice. I didn't want to kill this turian! I didn't want to kill _anybody_! That's what I had wanted to say. I wanted to step away from this silliness and, if I really had to, observe it from afar, as suited me best. But no! Nolan wanted me to take on the damning deed, and who was I to refuse him? Nolan kept us safe, gave us pay. He was the reason I was alive.

With everyone watching me, I took the gun into my hand. I'd never held a pistol before, but I was familiar with the concept. It was heavier than I'd expected, but not so much that I couldn't hold it straight in one hand. I stepped forward, square in front of the turian. Eco and Brot were still holding him down, and Grask had stepped away to avoid the crossfire.

Everything was ready. I held the pistol up, aligning it with the turian's forehead. It was difficult. I felt stiff, like my iced blood was trying to hold me still. I wanted to heed it. I didn't want to shoot. I wanted to drop the gun and run away like the scared kid I really was. Seconds were passing. The air had become unbearably silent. My eyes were held wide with tension. I was taking too long. If I was going to do something, I needed to stop hesitating and do it.

Then, breaking everything, the turian looked up at me. He was covered in filth, but I could still make out his eyes. They were blue, and they betrayed the fright of a child. Suddenly, I realized that this could have been me. If I had tried to steal from the camp, it would have been my head under the gun. That should have been the final straw, I realize in retrospect. I should have given the gun back to Nolan and saved what little dignity I had left in my own eyes.

But something inside me, something that liked to hide in the shadows of my practicality and rationale, kept me there.

"_Shoot,_" it told me.

I listened.

The pistol let out a sharp, hair-raising report. Eco and Brot dragged off the remains to be burned.

T

"I'm sorry if you weren't ready for that quite yet," Nolan said to me the next day.

Nolan's hut was the largest of all the homes, with it doubling as his office. It didn't hold much – a desk, a chair, a cot, a gun rack, and a shelf full of folders. I think the folders were full of records, though what he kept in the desk was beyond me. On it were only a datapad and a disassembled pistol. As far as I was concerned, however, its sole purpose was for him to sit on one side and me on the other.

"You needed to learn that lesson," he claimed. "Mercy and compassion have no place in the life we lead down here."

I stared at him, my expression every bit as blank as it had been when he offered me the gun.

"You don't have to forgive me," he continued. "But I could tell the moment I saw you. You're not like most of the idiots and psychos we get down here. You've still got light in your eyes."

A lump sat lodged in my throat. It kept me from reacting in any real way.

"Cockney tells me that you don't talk about yourself. Says you prefer to keep quiet about what you think," he kept on, leaning in a little. "It paints a strange picture of you. Regardless of how old you are, you're still pretty much a kid – or, at least, you were before you got here. Most kids your age are loud and obnoxious, no offense."

I thought about mentioning how that turian was a kid as well, but I didn't.

"I'm not gonna lie. I fully expected you to refuse the gun, or hand it back to me after you caught yourself."

My head sank, bringing my sightless gaze to the floor.

"So now I'm confused," he finally concluded that train of thought before moving on. "You know, I thought about throwing you out when you first showed up. My first thought as that we didn't need another kid around – not after… Well…"

_Seven slats, I counted. Seven people were dead. Two of them were noticeably shorter than the rest. Children?_

"Those two were the best thing we had down here. Brother and sister, Kory and Quess. Parents were poor as shit, but they raised 'em right. Couldn't leave them when they came down to work. They were damn useful, though. Could climb to the top of the junk piles without causing avalanches. And they were always willing to help out. Always smiling…"

I ran my dirty hands through my hair, trying to outplay numbness before it set in.

"We lost seven good people that day, including them," he said after a moment of silence. "Then, out of nowhere, you appeared. I saw you and instantly thought 'Not again.'"

The concept of not being taken into the group was chilling.

"But then I got a better look at you. You were just standing there, staring blankly as people I knew disintegrated. The look on your face… So confused, so raw. It's rare to see anyone react like that on Omega. I've been here for almost seven years. I've seen of people's reactions to death. Yours? It told me everything I needed to know about you."

Forcing myself not to think about that day, I broke my gaze off of the floor. Slowly, I came back up to glare at the man in agitation. His form was hunched over on his desk, propping his chin on his interlaced hands. He was leering back at me, giving me the impression that this was more than just an apology. It was a confrontation – a continuation of the execution.

"You're young, but you're not witless. Bright-eyed, but not bushy-tailed. You're smart enough to keep your mouth shut, act respectfully, and work responsibly. People like you aren't typically made in an environment like Omega, though. Too skinny and green to be a mercenary, not rough-cut enough to be a thief, and too quick on the uptake to be a junkie. If I had to make a guess, I'd say you were a botched slave or kidnapping victim out from one of the colonies."

That was as close a guess as anyone could have made, considering the truth. Hearing it made me uncomfortable, which, mounted with my edginess, finally made me angry.

Angry and I didn't cooperate very well.

"_What_-?!" I lost my cool for the briefest of instances, pounding an unconsciously balled fist onto my side of the desk. The metal walls of the hut reverberated the exclamation as the datapad and gun parts shifted ever so slightly. Then the place went silent. It wasn't the unbearable silence from the execution, but the silence of caution. Whoever made the next move was the one admitting to a mistake. Was he wrong for egging me on, or was I wrong for being mad?

I took a deep breath.

"What do you want from me?" I asked honestly, swallowing my anger and replacing it with fake humility. That was the best I could do at the moment. As I spoke, I found my eyes looking down again. I couldn't look him in the eye and ask him that.

He didn't say anything. I chanced a peek at him, finding that he was just staring at me. We both knew I was the one in the wrong. I had zero authority in this place, and I certainly had no right to be anything more than just a little upset with Nolan. I knew he was correct, no matter how difficult it was to agree with. Empathy was both a criminal's best asset and worst nightmare. An asset because, when he received it from others, he could abuse it to get what he wanted. That worked both ways, though. If he had a hostage empathize with him, they could possibly help him, but if he empathized with the hostage, they could hurt him.

Now, I wasn't a criminal, but that didn't mean the people around me weren't. Whether we acted like it or not, we lived on a station full of gangs and psychos. People who worked hard making honest livings were in the minority. As the song goes, '_You gotta have a con in this land of milk and honey._' If you don't… Well… Then you're like me, quietly sifting through trash for a living.

I digress. The point is, I had to kill that turian for my own good, as well as the good of the group.

But that didn't mean I had to like it.

"You can go now. Remember what I said."

Cockney met me outside with a beer. I snatched it and took a longer sip than normal.

"What'd he say?" he asked as we made our way over to his place.

"He gave me the 'It was for your own good,' talk."

"That all?"

I shot the man a glance. He didn't ask again.

As we passed through the camp, I noticed everybody taking fleeting looks in my direction. It was like walking through the cafeteria after getting publicly called to the office. They all thought that I was in trouble or something. Maybe they thought I was crazy. I didn't know, nor did I care. They could think whatever they wanted. It didn't make them right.

As we sat down, I suddenly felt a headache coming on. I didn't get headaches often, especially not since my days of blasting video game soundtracks and staring at bright computers screens came to an abrupt end. It had to be sensory overload, I guessed. I was depressed about the bad hauls, confused about killing the turian, and agitated that I couldn't handle it without other people prying into my thought process. Beyond that, I was even more agitated that Nolan had been trying to peg me. It had been months since my arrival. If I had been going to open up to someone, I'd have fucking done it by now. Making me kill someone, whether he thought I'd do it or not, was a pretty shit way of going about it.

But, I figured, maybe that's just how shit flies on Omega. It's an extreme place. If you've got to learn about your moral compass, why not learn it via execution? It certainly spelled out one important thing for me: I was perfectly willing to look someone in the eye right before I murdered them.

As that thought tumbled around in my fractured mind, I sat with my head resting in the palm that wasn't holding a beer.

"Hey, uh…" Cockney struggled to find the right thing to say. "Whatever he said in there, I'm sure it was something you needed to hear."

I looked at him. No intended emotion behind it. Just to see him as he talked.

"I mean, I know it's hard out here. Life ain't ever easy when you live on the fringes of civilization, like we do, but it always helps when you learn lessons like this. It keeps you alive."

I stared at him for a moment. He was grinning sadly, as if he felt sorry for something – as if he had sympathy for me. It was like he knew what I was going through and was trying to make me feel better by seeing the silver lining in the clouds.

"Alive," I repeated the word. I saw the turian's blue eyes again.

"Yeah," Cockney nodded, as if we were making progress.

I saw a reflection of myself from back before this all happened. I saw my own eyes, noting how they were a similar color of blue.

_It could have been me._

It took the cold sensation of beer running down my hand to make me realize that I was becoming very upset very quickly. I looked down, finding that I'd crushed the can until its sides had broken. My hand was a fist, my breathing was picking up, and my heart was racing.

"Uh… You okay, man?"

I stood up, tossing the can violently into a nearby barrel. Cockney didn't say anything as I stomped off towards my hut. I went in, closed the ragged curtain that served as a door, and collapsed onto my cot.

Silently, I wished that I was dead.

* * *

**And the descent.**

**Sorry if this chapter was a little too dark for some of you. Oddly enough, I initially started this story with humor in mind. Who knows, though? Maybe things will start to actually look up before too long.**

**Next chapter will bring about a change of pace. That's right! It's finally time for some sort of PLOT to stir up. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Well THAT was a rather unprecedented hiatus.**

**Seriously, though. The month of June was absolutely riddled with bullshit for me. Don't worry, though. I'm not going anywhere, and this story is still eager to be written. In fact, the month actually gave me some good time to hammer out more plot details. That's always a good thing. Writing by the seat of your pants is fun, but it's not really conducive to creating something that makes sense twenty chapters down the line.**

**Thanks for all the reviews, by the way. EIGHT on the last chapter. Phenomenal! I can't thank you readers enough!**

* * *

_**Dust in the Mass Effect**_

**Chapter 6**

"**Format HDD"**

* * *

It became a haze. Waking up, eating tasteless food, working my ass off, and going to sleep. Mindless routine, all building up to a future I was trying my hardest to forget about.

Is it bad to say that the most noteworthy part of this time was the nightmares? They weren't too often, so I guess I can be thankful for that. Still, though. I'd see that turian staring up at me, but then he'd be standing over me. He'd level a pistol at my head and…

There were ups, though. I was, much to my own surprise, getting better at my job. Not to suggest that the tedium of picking through junk was overly difficult, but I was starting to feel less drained at the end of three-haul days. The only problem was that there really _weren't_ any three-haul days. It seemed like the Talons were beating us to every other drop. Money was almost coming exclusively from Blin and the digger, even if a good chunk of it was going towards fixing the damn machine. But hey, at least I was becoming really skilled at cards.

Ups.

As November crawled into December, though, it started to become pretty hopeless. The Talons were stepping up their operation, and, to make matters worse by a considerable margin, the Blue Suns had moved in on the opposite side. We didn't know why, with the most likely speculation being that the vorcha had moved out and the Suns had decided to fill the gap. There was one thing we could be certain of, however. This was the beginning of the end.

My days in the scrapyard were coming to a close.

T

"Everyone who's not here is gone," Eco reported, shaking his head. We were standing in the middle of camp – what was left of us, that is. Nolan, Eco, Cockney, Dirk, Blin, and me.

"The batarians and the salarians…" Nolan grumbled at our lost numbers. In just one silent evening, our numbers had been slashed in half. Nobody had seen them go. The only indication I had was that I'd seen the five of them huddled up talking the day before.

"Dammit!" Blin swore, kicking a can in a cliché moment of fury. As the only nonhuman left, the quarian seemed to feel left out. "Why'd they leave me? I mean, shit! They took the salarians, but not me! The salarians don't even talk half the time! I don't even think they ever said their names!"

"Felghe and Oristan," Eco deadpanned.

"What?"

"The salarians' names – Felghe and Oristan."

"Oh, well whoop-dee-fucking-doo."

"That's enough," Nolan said, his voice sounding weary.

"So…" Cockney was the next to talk. "This is it, right? We're fucked."

We all looked at Nolan. The middle-aged man never looked older than at this point. He had forgotten to shave recently, and the silvery beginnings of his beard gave him the look of a man who was worn beyond his years. He stood there quietly for a few moments.

"The Talons on one side, Suns on the other," Cockney kept going. "I know it's not what we want to hear, but we don't have any other options. We gotta beat it before one of them decides to cut out some of the extra competition. You _know_ we don't stand a chance against them. The vorcha are one thing, but pro merc strike squads don't fuck around."

"I said _that's enough_, Ken," Nolan put his hand up to the man. We all looked at Cockney. I don't think anyone else had known his real name. He clammed up, though, obviously getting the point.

"Cockney, get your pistol and start patrolling the camp perimeter. Keep your wits about you," the soldier began, his expression now grave. Cockney nodded and went off without another word. Nolan then turned. "Blin, Eco, it's business as usual. Start up the digger and get busy. I'll be over in a minute to help out."

The two obeyed without question, though Blin seemed slightly hesitant. Anyway, this brought the man to me and Dirk.

"You two, come with me."

Dirk and I glanced at each other distastefully before following after Nolan. The junkie and I had never really gotten along. Then again, I really can't think of _anyone_ that really got along with Dirk. The most anyone did was really just put up with him and his habits. He made snide remarks, spent all his money on red sand, and played poker like an asshole – all of which you probably already knew. Don't be surprised when I tell you that his character didn't have much more in terms of depth.

Inside Nolan's hut, we were surprised to see him take up his datapad and start keying intently. Most times when one was a guest in the boss's office, they would have his undivided attention. It told me that the datapad must be important to whatever was about to happen.

"As much as it pains me to admit it, Cockney's right," Nolan spoke quickly as he pulled up what he was looking for. With a few quick keystrokes, he sent the file to our omni-tools. I pulled it up without delay, finding a marked up map of the junkyard grid. There was a small part of highlighted, a touch to which zoomed in to reveal a more detailed map of a smaller section.

"What is this?" I asked, not understanding.

"After the vorcha raid, I found this on one of their omni-tools. It appears to have been stolen from a treasure hunter," he stated seriously. Just then, I felt my chest lurch. "There aren't any details, but I'd be willing to bet that the hunter believed the Platinum to be hidden somewhere inside that section of the junkyard."

There was a long silence, which I spent studying the map. It wasn't extremely detailed, just showing the paths that weaved through the junk piles. Each section where a pile sat was marked with one of several symbols I didn't recognize, numerous of which had been scribbled over or crossed out. Whoever had made this must have been at it for quite a while. Zooming out showed that nearly half the yard had been checked over.

"Don't tell me you want us to go after that wild goose," Dirk spoke up, sounding somewhere between confused and amused.

"It's that or the camp is done."

I thought about is as they argued, remembering Cockney telling me about the pirate lord's ship filled with precious metal being buried out in the yard somewhere. Treasure hunters would pass through in search of it, though they had become scarce once it got out that the Talons were killing most of them on sight.

"It's long hike out to the spot," Nolan spoke loudly, cutting of Dirk and regaining my attention. "It goes through Talon territory, and it could take days to find it. So, honestly, I can't ask you to do this."

He looked at us grimly. It made my chest hurt. It was all seemed so sudden and drastic. We were basically being rushed into the endgame here. Now it wasn't just money that we didn't have, it was defense. Losing those that we did basically cut our weapons experience by two thirds. Nolan and Eco by themselves weren't exactly a fire team, and Cockney knew how to use his pistol in the most basic form of the concept. My firearms experience was extremely limited, and that wasn't even counting the execution. Dirk? I'd never even seen him with a gun until Nolan handed him one.

"Uhh…" Dirk seemed at a loss for words as he examined the pistol in his hand. Thankfully, he wasn't so ignorant as to hold it ready to fire.

"You ever use one before?" Nolan asked. He didn't sound hopeful.

"Er, yeah," Dirk claimed, sounding kinda offput. "Been a while, though."

"How long?"

"Like, 'I still lived on Benning' long."

"Well, then consider it for emergencies only," the soldier advised before pulling out another and handing it my way. "I suppose you…"

He stopped himself, knowing full well what this was reminiscent of. I took it without bothering to get lost in bad memories, turning myself away from the two and getting into position. It wasn't anything I'd ever actually practiced. Just what I'd seen. Legs apart, one foot ahead of the other, knees bent, holding the weapon with two hands, finger off the trigger, etc. I remembered one scene in particular from The Walking Dead game – when Lee teaches Clementine how to shoot. I quickly unlocked my arms, something that was easy to forget.

With that, I brought the gun up. Finger was still off the trigger, but I could see down the sight. There was a small scar on the metal wall in front of me. It was perfectly in my aim. Thankfully, before any mischievous ideas could come to mind, Nolan reached over and pushed the weapon back towards the floor.

"That'll do," he said solemnly. I nodded and returned to standing.

"Take those and five days' rations with you. Head to the marked area on the map. I don't care what you do and how you do it, but, if you find that metal, call me. I've got a line on a buyer who'd be willing to assist in excavation. We sell that stuff and we're all out of this shithole."

"Hold up," Dirk held up his hand. "That's it? That's your master plan? The only way we're going to save this camp is with a suicidal get-rich-quick snipe hunt?"

"We are out of options!" Nolan surged, slamming his hands down on top of his desk. My ears were ringing from his unexpected rise in volume. Dirk reeled back a ways, obviously not having meant to incite such a reaction. "It's not about saving the camp. I know that it's not the best plan out there, but it's the only one that has us leaving here with more than just what we can carry. We scrape by, Dirk. It's always been that way, and, unless you have some magical way of defeating mercenary squads, it's going to stay that way. Or, if you can be fucking bothered, you can lay off the sand for a few days and go find us a way out of this god-forsaken pit!"

Dirk was astounded. No other way of saying it. After a few seconds, he remembered to close his mouth and stormed out of the hut. Nolan sighed and sat down, obviously winded from all the stress that recent days were bringing him. Something in me wanted to feel sorry for him, but there was something I needed to know first.

"You said you've had this since the vorcha attack."

He looked up at me as I spoke. I was holding up the treasure map.

"Why did you keep it secret? We could've been out of here months ago."

"Because taking a risk on a wild goose chase isn't the best business strategy," he stated with a mirthless chuckle. "I also needed time to double-check the hunter's reasoning. A lot of it's obscure, but there are references to that part of the yard in the old captain's journals."

"Then it's readily available information?"

"If you know where to look, you can find anything on the extranet."

_Oh yeah. That's a thing._

To clarify, extranet service was something you paid for. I didn't make enough money to even _think_ about that kind of stuff.

"If the patterns are around for everyone to see, how do we know that it's even still there?"

"Well, there aren't any records of a ship filled with platinum being pulled out of the junkyard," the soldier shrugged before sighing again, this time with more notable amount of agitation. "Listen, I'm not going to promise you it's there. I'm not even going to say you have to go. I'm giving you a gun, allowing you to take some supplies, and _heavily suggesting_ that you leave before some guys with big guns show up and…"

He stopped again, bowing his head and covering his eyes with one hand.

"Just… If you find it, give me a call. Okay?"

He didn't look up. I didn't answer. It was here that I finally picked up on the shame in his tone. Everything was falling apart, and there wasn't anything he could do to fix it beyond giving us orders and praying that everything worked out. I won't deny wondering why we were all still hanging around here, but I always came to the same conclusion. We wouldn't be here if we had anywhere else to go.

Unable to give him a real answer, I asked one last question.

"The buyer. Who is it?"

He stayed quiet. I stood there for several seconds in uncomfortable silence, wondering and waiting. He didn't budge. After half a minute, I walked out.

The walk over to the supply shack was uneventful, I could hear the digger doing its thing not too far away, and Dirk was already walking off with a backpack over his shoulder. I guess he wasn't planning on wasting time. Figured I might as well act fast too.

I wanted to get out without Cockney seeing me.

It was odd between me and Cockney, not gonna lie. I guess what it boiled down to was we were each other's only real friend, but I wasn't willing to get into anything personal. We didn't actually know each other. I mean, I truthfully wasn't even sure why he stayed down here – not to imply that I really knew why _anyone _was down here. It's just that, there I was, getting ready to finally leave this damn place, and all I could do was think of how shitty a friend I was to a person that I had hardly considered a friend at all. I thought about the times when I'd snubbed his sociable approaches. I thought about the times when he ranted about how insignificant we were. Worst of all, I thought about the time when he'd tried to reassure me after the execution.

All of it made me feel like a bad person.

T

"So… That's it, huh? You're leaving."

I had waited at the end of camp for him, if only just to say goodbye.

"Nolan thinks it's for the best," I said, not even sure if I believed it.

"Psh, _Nolan_," Cockney shook his head derisively before kicking a piece of errant scrap metal out of frustration. "It's because of him that were still down here."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really," he enforced. "He kept us together down here, making us believe that we were safe and doing okay, but where's all that gotten us now? Fucked up the ass, that's where! With Grask and the others gone, it's all falling apart. Now he's telling you and Dirk to get lost. I'll probably be out next, then Blin, and finally he and Eco will run off and… and fucking… Fuck!"

There was a moment of silence after this, so I went ahead and got out the treasure map.

"He gave me this."

He stared at it for a second before obtaining an extremely humored smirk on his face.

"Oh!" he went on overdramatically. "I get it now. He's not just sending you away. He's sending you off to get killed looking for fucking bullshit space pirate booty! And with a backpack full of food too. Oh, that Nolan! He really knows how to make a guy laugh! What a _motherfucking CARD_!"

The last word was parallel with him throwing a nasty right hook at me. If I hadn't have moved, it'd have probably knocked me out cold.

"Jeez!" I reacted as one might expect. I thought he might swing again, but, instead, he straightened up and glared at me.

"Have I ever told you about how everything we do is fucking ridiculous?"

"Y-Yeah. You have."

"Oh…" he breathed, catching himself on that fact. Slowly, he calmed down, breathing heavy with his eyes clenched. After a moment, he pulled up and looked at me. I could tell he was sorry.

"It's all fucking ridiculous," I said, remembering his tantrum from that one time. "But you know what? We can't just give up and quit. That doesn't fix the situation. I've been sitting in this junk pile for _months_, doing absolutely nothing to help myself get out beyond working like a goddamn zombie. At least it was time-consuming, but guess what. I can't do that anymore. If I stay sat here for too much longer, I'm going to die. That's the truth of the matter."

He gawked at me, crestfallen.

"So I'm going to take this stupid map and I'm gonna look for that platinum for as long as I can. Maybe I'll find it. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll get killed by the Talons. If I stay here, I'll get killed for sure."

We were quiet again for a few seconds. You know how it goes. Words are exchanged, usually harsher than what was intended. Next thing you know you feel bad, and all you want to do is patch things up.

"Heh…" he chuckled. "Was there supposed to be some sort of Aesop in there?"

"I dunno," I half-smirked, shrugging. "I'm gonna go. You can't stop me."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Guess not."

I was about to turn around and go when it struck me to say one last thing.

"If I find it, I'll come back."

He looked at me, his face betraying surprise.

"You promise?"

"Definitely."

We left it at that. Thirty minutes later, I was following the map into the reaches of the junkyard.

It was strange. As I walked away from the camp, pretty much going off on my own for an uncertain amount of time, I came to realize something. Ever since I had arrived on Omega, I hadn't really been making my own decisions. Those things I'd said to Cockney made me think about it deeper. In all honesty, the only decision I'd made for myself was to get off that damn pile I'd woken up on. Of course, that had quickly turned into chaos. Then there was the whole thing with me getting shot at. I still couldn't fully quantify why that Talon had spared me. No matter how many times I run the scenario through in my head, nothing makes sense. I know they saw me. Their rifle light nearly blinded me. They had just killed those batarians in cold blood. So why did I get to live?

Unfortunately for my sanity, that turian as the only person who knew.

Even worse for my sanity was Dirk. I found him waiting for me about a kilo outside of camp. This was about as close as you could between our camp and Talon territory without fearing for your life.

"Figured you'd come this way," the junkie mocked me as he stood up. We were at a crossroads, and he got to the point by looking in the direction that led towards the nearest wall. "I'm going that way. You gonna stop me?"

He grinned as if he could see right through me. I'll never say that I was good at hiding how I felt about people, but, when it came to Dirk, I couldn't help but scowl harder than usual. He just had this seediness about him that, when combined with the fact that I knew about his addiction, simply made me harbor a natural disliking for him. Maybe he thought I hated him enough to try and stop him from screwing over the camp. Honestly, I didn't care what he did so long as he didn't double-cross them or me.

I looked at his gun very quickly. He wasn't touching it, telling me that I wasn't in any serious danger… yet.

"No," I answered.

"If you was smart, then you'd come with me," he continued, making have to physically try and not scowl harder. "I got a decent place I can shack up in for a while, give me an opportunity to find somewhere new to roll. If you ain't in no trouble, then the people there would probably give you work."

A proposition, I noted. _An out_. He was actually offering to get me out of here and help me find a new start. Was that what I wanted? I couldn't deny that it was a sickeningly tempting deal. Getting out of this place, finding a better stage of work with better pay – those had been goals for me in the longer term. And now this addled vagabond was giving me the chance.

But had I not just told someone important to me that I wasn't going to give up? Had I not just discovered that I was being too dependent on others? Did I not need to be making decisions for myself, and not taking the offers that others thought were best? Had I not decided that I was going to find that metal for the sake of everyone?

"I'll pass."

Dirk just laughed. That's when he grabbed his gun.

I was slower on the draw, not having been expecting it. He had his weapon leveled at me before I had gotten mine off its holster. I felt my body unconsciously tense up, my eyes unable to focus anywhere but the pistol's barrel. It was bewildering. What had just happened? Why were things still getting worse?

"Alright," he spoke to me again, this time grinning down at me sinisterly. "Allow me to rephrase my offer to you. You're coming with me to my dealer's den. He knows some fucking slavers. I'm gonna sell you to him in order to pay off my debts. You got that? Does your stupid little shit-covered brain understand what I'm saying?! You let me sell you, and maybe I don't put a hole between your eyes!"

This was the part where I learned that Dirk was in the kind of financial trouble that made people hide in junkyards and go batshit crazy. No wonder he did drugs.

"I don't know who you are," he sneered, gun shaking. "Or who you were, but you got an alright face. You're young, dumb, submissive, quiet – just the way the batarians like 'em! You'll net me at least enough to get to Deinech, and then it's all up for Dirk!"

So yeah, I got taken hostage by a guy with problems. It didn't help that we mutually disliked each other and both had guns. He wanted to sell me as a slave, while I wanted to live my life my own way.

Natural impasse. Also, his plan sucked. Sell me to a drug dealer that knows some slavers for a ticket off-station? Good luck with that. Odds were that the dealer would convince Dirk to sit in with him, call the slavers, and, when they showed up, the dealer would sell us both. Then I'd have to listen to him bitch about it until one or both of us got fed to a varren.

Too bad I was too petrified to pull my gun up and stop this madness.

"Well? Get moving!" he continued to point his weapon at me. His voice was cracking, and I noticed the gun still shaking a little. He was edgy, obviously not thinking clearly. It was good for me outsmarting him, but it also meant that he probably wouldn't be subject to reason. He was either going to hold me at gunpoint until he was satisfied or…

What could I do, though? Scenarios ran through my head. Any attempt at using words to solve this crisis suffered a penalty of Dirk possibly getting annoyed and offing me. He'd already stated that, in spite of his need to sell someone for money, he still had the gall to shoot me. Nothing said that someone had to be me. Also, if I let him lead me away from this crossroads, the possibility of me getting lost or worse came into play. My best course of action needed to end things here and now, and that meant physical action.

He was beginning to lose his patience. I wasn't moving, and his crazed smirk was slowly starting to become a scowl. My next thoughts were in regards to what quick moves I could pull to get that gun out of his shaky hand. It probably wouldn't take much. His knuckles weren't white, indicating that his grip wasn't too tight and that the shaking was probably due to nerves. He was close enough that I could shoot my leg up, maybe kick the gun away. But who's to say he doesn't get a shot off before I'm in the clear?

"I said move!"

It was too much. I couldn't think or move fast enough to get out of this unscathed. Getting close got me shot. Pulling my gun got me shot. Trying to distract him got me shot. Taking too long to think of a plan got me shot. The image of me taking a bullet to the head scared me stiff. Why was this so hard? I was going to die if I didn't do something! Wasn't the whole point of coming out here insuring my survival? Making my own decisions in life be damned! If I couldn't stop this dumbass from slaving me, then I wouldn't even have a life to decide about!

"_Move, dammit!_"

No more time. I had to act.

I was lucky. Nothing more to it. My body unlocked and my leg flew up in an uncalculated flail, catching the side his forearm. Inevitably, the gun went off. I fell down, Dirk stayed up, and the gun clattered off where we'd never find it.

"Agh!" Dirk grunted in surprise as I reeled in shock. It actually took a few seconds for my brain to fully register the intense amount of pain that was surging through my shoulder. When it did, however, I knew exactly what had happened.

I had been shot. _I was an idiot_ and I had been shot.

"You fucking piece of shit!" the junkie cursed at me as he stumbled backward, clutching where my shoe had made contact. I can only assume that my kick had been powerful enough to really hurt him because he sounded pretty torn up about it. "Now look at ya! They won't fucking take you with a hole in you, you dumb fucking bastard _son of a_-!"

I took the time he was wasting by insulting me to fight through the pain and finally pull my own gun. He stopped swearing, froze in fright, and then I shot him. I shot him twice. I shot him three times. I shot him until he fell over. Then, in a sudden moment of vindication, I stood up, stomped over, and shot him in his stupid junkie head.

It felt _great_, if only for a few seconds. Then I realized that I had just murdered Dirk.

I don't know how much time passed. I just stood there, heaving hard breaths, nursing my shoulder, and staring at the very-much deceased form of my once more-or-less comrade. After a few moments, I coughed up my breakfast and gobbed it off where no one would be bothered by it. Then I returned to staring. It was absurd, I remember thinking. I mean, I didn't just shoot him. _I shot the hell out of him_. One, two… Seven! I'd shot him seven times! Sure, they say there's no kill like overkill, especially when you're killing someone threatening to enslave you, but Christ! What the hell was wrong with me? First that turian, and now this? Was I turning into a psychopath or something?

For some reason, as I took in the scene, I remembered the time when Grask had thrown the poker table at him. I'd always known Dirk was scum, from the instant I'd learned of his drug habit, but I never thought he was anything more than the harmless kind of scum. Never really hurting anybody – only himself. Here we were, though. He was dead, and I had hole in my shoulder that felt like fire. I laughed hopelessly at the comparison, imagining what would've happened if Grask had been the one to shoot me. Then I really would have been on fire.

Dark humor aside, I was bleeding. My arm was done for if I couldn't get some help for it. Unfortunately, my five days of rations hadn't come with a med-kit. There was only _one_ med-kit in camp, and it was in Nolan's office. That stuff was actually pretty damn expensive. Thus, the only real course of action was for me to head back.

…The only problem was that, at some point during my confrontation with Dirk, we'd wound up smack-dab in the middle of the crossroads. I'd completely lost my bearings on which way the camp was. Also not helping was the fact that it was a solid half-hour back, and that was under ideal conditions. I was losing blood and in a fuckton of pain, so ideal was about as far away as I was willing to let it go. All hope was not lost, however. I could still call Nolan and let him know. Then he could come get me, and-

"AAahagh!"

My typing arm had been the one shot – my right arm, to be exact. I could bring up my omni-tool on my left, but any attempt to move my right was met with horrific pain that I hadn't been counting on. Speaking of the matter, my neck was having trouble as well. I was coming down off the adrenaline from the skirmish, which meant the pain was coming up. Don't let the movies fool you. As I was about to find out, getting shot in the shoulder is some serious shit.

As I bumbled, trying to find a way to use the damn interface with only one hand, the cliché happened. My situation took a very quick descent from bad to worse.

"Freeze!"

_Aw shit…_

The sight of the turian in red armor hoisting an assault rifle my way filled me with a peculiar sense of dread. It's hard to accurately describe to someone who hasn't thought they were about to die before. Just take my word on it when I say that it involves complete resignation of hope and belief.

I did as commanded and froze, watching while the Talon stalked up to me. My brain hastily ran scenarios again, each one ending with me taking rounds to my squishy bits. All I could do was stand there with my omni-tool out and stare blankly at my second captor in just under eight minutes. It was a turian, as I said, but there was something different about. As it took a second to look about, I noticed that its helmet lacked the long extension in the back for a male turian's head crests. Thus, she had to be a female turian. Of course, had my own head not been swimming thanks to the searing pain shooting through a good-sized portion of my body, I probably would have figured that from the voice.

"Put the omni-tool away."

I did so. She then continued to approach me at a pace that was neither too slow nor fast. It all seemed a little too military of her. I thought mercs were supposed to wild and reckless. Then again, Talons never really did seem to be like most mercs. If you asked Cockney or Eco, then your average merc would shoot you as a response to 'hello'. Talons, then, would tell you to fuck off and give you five seconds to perform such _before_ shooting you.

Once she reached me, things got weird. She stared at me through her helmet. I couldn't see her eyes, but the way she moved her head in to get a closer look informed me that she examining me for some reason. Before I could be stupid and ask what was going on, she brought up a three-digited hand and ran it through my short hair. Dust particles flew off.

"Blond hair…" she mumbled as I struggled with feelings of violation. "Oh! You're that kid – the one who sneezed at me in the pipe!"

My jaw fell open ever so slightly. Was this really happening? This was the supposedly dangerous mercenary that had spared my life?

I literally couldn't believe it. What the fucking hell, right?

"I see you've totally squandered the second chance I gave you," she remarked, jabbing me accusingly in the chest with her rifle. I quivered fearfully. "Wasting your life away as a scavenger is no way to make a living, y'know. Extra so when you've got three different merc bands down here all too willing to kill a vagabond such as yourself."

I was at a loss for words. In my entire life, nothing like this had ever happened to me. I'd never been held up by a soldier who then proceeded to treat me like a friend. I always thought that, were I to come across a Talon without the rest of the group with me, I would be killed instantly. In some delusions, they might've even decapitated me and sent my head back as a warning. This was not happening. Instead, they were treating me as a familiar face and judging my decisions/lack thereof in life. Thus, I didn't have the foggiest idea how to proceed. I just stood there like a moron and stared at her.

She tilted her head to the side, as people do when confused about you.

"You okay?" she asked, seeming somewhat concerned for me. I can only assume that it had taken her up till this point to notice the blood seeping down my arm. "Whoa. Nice bullet wound. That oughta leave a wicked scar."

A backhanded compliment if a professional killer was ever able to give one.

_However many mercs in this junkyard, and I had to get the strange one._

"Hard to tell through all the dust on you, but you're looking a little pale," she kept on talking as my eyes fought to keep focus on her.

Instead of answering her, I wondered why I was getting really cold all of the sudden. Then, as if reminding me of the plainly obvious fact that I needed emergency medical care, my heart began to hurt. Not a good feeling, let me tell you. The pain in my arm and neck took the moment to triple, followed by my vision becoming unbearably hazy. I didn't need any more prompt after that. I simply took a deep breath, groaned, closed my eyes, and passed out from shock.

* * *

**And OH MY GOD SOMETHING HAPPENED.**

**I know this probably wasn't what many of you were expecting, but this was the plan all along. This is indeed the beginning of the end of the junkyard arc. Hopefully the next one will take us somewhere with more colorful scenery. And maybe I can get Dust some new clothes. That jumpsuit must be absolutely filthy by now.**

**Super Ultra Mega thanks to my good pal Warhammer 2-4 for his beta-reading efforts, as well as Spiritstrike for playing alternate while WH was on vacation! If you're reading this, make sure you check out their stuffs. If you don't, I'll poke you with a spork.**


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